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[XBLA & PC] Gyromancer: Square-Enix & PopCap take on Puzzle Quest

A couple of weeks ago we spoke of Gyromancer, an upcoming Xbox Live Arcade title being published by Square Enix. Now the game has been officially announced, but what surprises us is that PopCap are also involved.

Gyromancer mixes the world of Bejeweled, specifically Bejeweled Blitz, and has created a Puzzle RPG similar to Puzzle Quest. You rotate jewels within a square in order to connect 3 or more together, which allows you to cast spells against your rival.

It does look a lot like Puzzle Quest, but it has a gigantic slap of polish on top of it. It's got all the spectacle of a Final Fantasy game, but in a puzzle setting.

There is no current date set for the game, but I would expect it to come out sometime next year.

It's very clearly inspired by Puzzle Quest, but considering Square Enix has tons of RPG experience and PopCap has tons of puzzle experience, I would wager this could be an insanely well-balanced and extremely polished iteration of the puzzle-RPG subgenre. And if there's one thing Puzzle Quest desperately needed, it was polish. As a PQ devotee, I'm way excited.

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It's very clearly inspired by Puzzle Quest, but considering Square Enix has tons of RPG experience and PopCap has tons of puzzle experience, I would wager this could be an insanely well-balanced and extremely polished iteration of the puzzle-RPG subgenre. And if there's one thing Puzzle Quest desperately needed, it was polish. As a PQ devotee, I'm way excited.

Truth. I loved PQ, but damn if it didn't need both better balance and more polish.

I think this is sailing very close to the 'inspired by'/'ripping off' border, but as a consumer rather than an employee of whatever company made Puzzle Quest I can happily ignore that and just be hopeful for a shiny new game.

This looks shit hot. PopCap knows its puzzle games, and SquareEnix brings the polish and RPG mechanics, and you've potentially got a Puzzle Quest knockoff thats better than the original. If anyone can do it, these are the developers to do it.

September 24, 2009 - Two major, but perhaps unlikely, forces in gaming are teaming up to bring you another puzzle game with RPG elements. Square Enix has formed a giant Voltron robot with PopCap in order to create Gyromancer, a very Puzzle Questish game for Xbox Live Arcade and PC. It's on the show floor here at the Tokyo Game Show and we (literally) took it for a spin.

Just like in Puzzle Quest, players move about from location to location on an overworld map and get into battles with monsters that are settled in a Bejewelled-style match three game. PopCap steps in to handle the puzzle part and modeled it after Bejewelled Twist so that players rotate four gems clockwise instead of swapping two at a time (an item can be used to reverse the flow of your spinner). Exposition is delivered via still art in cut scenes.

"We've always enjoyed a strong partnership with PopCap Games and Gyromancer represents our goal of developing unique gaming experiences, "said John Yamamoto, president and chief executive officer of Square Enix, in a statement released today. "We believe that Gyromancer will appeal not only to core gamers, but will further introduce the RPG genre to casual gamers as well."

Our hero, Rivel, has the ability to summon monsters. He can have three beasts with him at a time but can only take one into battle. Before hitting the gem field he'll have to choose the right monster for the job. The beasts aren't healed after a fight and they can perish, so managing your pack does take some strategy. There are over 50 monsters to be summoned, but only a few are available from the start. After a battle you'll gain experience which leads to new beasts. In the early stages of the game we fought enemies like Cait Sith with a Power Beetle.

Damage is dealt by matching gems that are the same color as your chosen monster. You can spin the dial without creating a match, but doing so will curse a gem on screen. If you don't clear the cursed gem within a handful of turns, you'll take damage.

Gyromancer seems like a lot of fun and it comes from two fantastic developers. Look for it on XBLA and PC soon.

Yeah. And according to most reviews I read, it was much more of a sequel to PQ than Galactrix was.

Definitely true. Unfortunately, they removed the "good" when they made Kingdoms. It just felt tedious and boring to me. I enjoyed Galactrix, except that for some reason my copy (Steam) would randomly crash to desktop at short intervals.

I guess what I'm saying it, hooray if this is a spiritual descendent of PQ that actually works.

Yeah. And according to most reviews I read, it was much more of a sequel to PQ than Galactrix was.

Definitely true. Unfortunately, they removed the "good" when they made Kingdoms. It just felt tedious and boring to me. I enjoyed Galactrix, except that for some reason my copy (Steam) would randomly crash to desktop at short intervals.

I guess what I'm saying it, hooray if this is a spiritual descendent of PQ that actually works.

Seriously. Both Galactrix and PK were terrible for different reasons, but I have faith that Square and PopCap can remedy this current lack of puzzle RPG goodness.

I heard many people detail the issues with Galactrix but what specifically was wrong with Kingdoms? It seemed to just entirely fly under the radar for me.

Abysmal AI. There doesn't seem to be any AI "strategy" just do shit randomly. Often it would do shit that simply didn't make ANY sense. The battle system is just plain un-fun and manages to be even more repetitive than Puzzle Quest. In PQ, you could at least skip random encounters with a higher level mount or wipe out most "trash" mobs (and bosses ) in a single turn.

Spells are (mostly) worthless, units are clear upgrades/downgrades so there's not so much diversity in play-style, and all the customization options are basically worthless because you run into the obvious upgrade/downgrade problem.

Some of the mini-games are alright (I liked the "wipe out the board" one) but there's little else that was redeeming about the game.

Also, in PK you'll rarely be using spells, rather it will be your troops attacking, and there's really no difference between them. All the cool non-damage spells that rocked so hard in PQ...well, not so much in PK.

Any idea about a release date? And when the inevitable lawsuit will come?

As long as the computer isn't always 300 steps ahead of the player, this will be good.

Not to say I still don't fucking love PQ. I have both on DS and never go anywhere without them!

Goddamn cheating-whore AI. Oh, you moved one piece and five skulls fell down magically in a column? Screw you!

I gotta quote this. I recently started playing PQ again and it's addicting as hell, but FUCK if it isn't full of bullshit. I haven't raged this hard at a game in years and I can be a pretty angry person at times.

Aside from what templewulf mentioned, the following scenario has made me rage quit PQ a few times and go play something else:

Highest cunning goes first. Enemy starts. OH WTF? 5 fucking skulls lined up with two 5 point skulls in the line. Then the enemy gets six turns in a row which lands me at under half health before I even get a turn? GG.

All that said, this game looks like it could be good. I wonder what the story is going to be like? The art direction is fantastic. Has anyone else found themselves far more excited for XBLA releases than full retail games as of late?

As long as the computer isn't always 300 steps ahead of the player, this will be good.

Not to say I still don't fucking love PQ. I have both on DS and never go anywhere without them!

Goddamn cheating-whore AI. Oh, you moved one piece and five skulls fell down magically in a column? Screw you!

I gotta quote this. I recently started playing PQ again and it's addicting as hell, but FUCK if it isn't full of bullshit. I haven't raged this hard at a game in years and I can be a pretty angry person at times.

Aside from what templewulf mentioned, the following scenario has made me rage quit PQ a few times and go play something else:

Highest cunning goes first. Enemy starts. OH WTF? 5 fucking skulls lined up with two 5 point skulls in the line. Then the enemy gets six turns in a row which lands me at under half health before I even get a turn? GG.

All that said, this game looks like it could be good. I wonder what the story is going to be like? The art direction is fantastic. Has anyone else found themselves far more excited for XBLA releases than full retail games as of late?

It has been said many times that the AI does not cheat. It doesn't know what is off screen any more than you do and just makes clears with the best odds of a chain kicking off. You have had just as much luck, you just notice it more when the enemy does it.

For the love of all that is video games, please let's not start yet another thread that debates whether or not the AI cheats in Puzzle Quest. It's been disproven. You're just unlucky sometimes. End of story.

I can definitely state that the AI in NO way cheats, nor does it know what gems are going to fall. I wrote the AI code myself, so I am 100% certain of this.

Look at it another way...
a) I am a programmer, so I'm basically lazy
b) Writing a cheating AI with look-ahead & multiple board evaluations is a LOT more work than writing a non-cheating AI that merely evaluates a single board
c) If I wanted to make the game harder, I actually would have done the LAZY thing and just given the monsters more Life Points

I don't think the AI in PQ cheats, it's just that those lucky breaks are usually MUCH more to the computer's advantage. X amount of damage that pops up randomly is usually a bigger percentage of your health than the computers - at least for the boss fights and sieges that they really seem to make or break.

It could also just be a bigger deal for me because I played druid. But yeah, I can only play pq for like an hour before the nonsense annoys me to hell.